UC Riverside

My dissertation is a study of (anti-)displacement organizing and genealogies in North East Los Angeles (NELA). It is based on my time with an anti-displacement grassroots collective known as the Northeast Los Angeles Alliance (NELAA). Started in 2014, NELAA was our response to the post-recession resurgence of the housing market, its exacerbation/ exploitation of the affordable housing crisis in Los Angeles, and its preying on low-income and immigrant tenants. Like NELAA, my project takes on the displacement-driven speculative financial formulas of the real estate industry/ private property regime (derivatives of a necro-speculative social calculus) through an engagement/ examination of the political economies of belonging and the libidinal economies of housing. All in all, my research is a study of Latinx/ Chicanx geographies through the lens of race and property, tenure and belonging. I apply a relational analysis that understands Latinx/ Chicanx geographies through its exchanges/ entanglements with Indigenous and Black geographies. In it I argue that Latinx spaces/ neighborhoods are themselves constructed and defended through de-indigenizing and anti-black logics of inhabitance, a politics of belonging that stems foundationally from the postcolonial politics of being. My methods include critical ethnography, oral history, and participatory direct-action research. I also conduct textual analyses of protest/ movement ephemera, local historiographies, murals, early 20th century booster literature, court transcripts, and legal documents. In terms of scale, my research is mainly focused on a specific neighborhood in NELA (Highland Park), but broadens out to include the area (NELA), city (Los Angeles), state (California), region (US Southwest), and nation (federal housing regulations).